Kehila Kedosha Janina, often abbreviated as KKJ, is one of the rarest and most living cases of Judaism on the Lower East Side: a Romaniote synagogue, linked to the Greek Jewish tradition and distinct from both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic worlds. The building itself, narrow and in a tenement-style format, was constructed in 1926–1927 for a community of Romaniote Jews originating from Ioannina, also known as Janina, in northwestern Greece.

The congregation was organized in New York in 1906, at a time when the neighborhood was dense with immigrant synagogues, almost all marked by different languages and rites. The impulse was clear: to preserve a specific liturgy and a communal culture developed in Greece over centuries. In 1927, the group opened its doors at the current address, consolidating on the city’s Jewish map a third, lesser-known identity strand, and for that reason all the more significant.

The building was designed by Sydney Daub and is immediately recognizable by the symbols on its facade: Stars of David, Tablets of the Law, and a cut-out arch suggesting an Orientalizing visual language, consistent with the Mediterranean origins of the community. It is also identified as the only surviving Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere with an active congregation.

Here the Torah is not a decorative detail, but memory carried in material form. KKJ preserves three Torah scrolls brought from Ioannina, and one of them, associated with the synagogue’s dedication in 1927, is described as housed in a heavy silver tik, a rigid case common in Mediterranean and Eastern traditions and distinct from the more widely known Ashkenazi imagery prevalent in New York.

Since 1997, the women’s gallery has housed a museum created to tell the story of the community and of Greek Judaism to an audience that, in most cases, had never heard of the Romaniotes. The space includes a library, gallery, and educational resources, and is described as containing the first Holocaust memorial in America dedicated to Greek Jews, as well as a community area on the lower floor inspired by a traditional Greek cafe.